Vocabulary/minusco

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-: y

Halve

Rank 0 -- operates on individual atoms of y, producing a result of the same shape -- WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

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Equivalent to y % 2 (y divided by 2).

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Common Uses

Has advantages in tacit definitions over (expression)%2.

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More Information

Halve video

Related Primitives

Double (+: y), Square (*: y), Square Root (%: y)

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x -: y

Match

Rank Infinity -- operates on x and y as a whole -- WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

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Returns a boolean value, 1 if and only if x is the same as y in shape and elements. Tolerant comparison is used whenever numeric types are compared; use -:!.0 to force exact comparison.

   'no' -: |. 'on'
1
   'no' -: 'yes'
0

Use x -: y to compare two entire nouns for equality. If you want to test equality of individual atoms in a noun, use =.

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Common Uses

1. Matching strings of varying length.

   reply=: 'yes'

   reply = 'yes'
1 1 1
   reply = 'no'
|length error
|   reply    ='no'
   reply -: 'yes'
1
   reply -: 'no'
0

2. Comparing entire arrays for equality.

   ]a =. i. 2 3
0 1 2
3 4 5
   ]b =. |. a  NB. Reverse order of rows
3 4 5
0 1 2
   a -: b
0
   a -: |. b
1

3. Shape matters for matching

   ]a =. 9   NB. Create a noun
9
   ]b =. a -. 5   NB. Remove any items that match 5.  There aren't any, so no change
9
   b -: a   NB. Want to bet there was no change?
0
   $a    NB. What happened?  a is an atom...

   $b    NB. ...but b became a list
1
   b -: ,a
1

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Related Primitives

Equal (x = y)

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More Information

1. Two nouns that match are equivalent for most purposes, the exception being empty arrays. (An empty array is one that contains no items). J primitives that accept lists as control arguments perform the same on empty arrays of any type (examples: x in x { y or x {. y). However, if an empty array must be filled, because it is a data argument or is applied to a verb of lower rank, the fill will depend on the type of the empty argument.

   '' -: 0$0   NB. Empty arrays match...
1
   ({. '') -: ({. 0 $ 0)  NB. but are not always equivalent
0

2. Nouns that match may have different types as disclosed by 3!:0.

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Use These Combinations

Combinations using x -: y that have exceptionally good performance include:

What it does	Type; Precisions; Ranks	Syntax	Variants; Restrictions	Benefits; Bug Warnings
Not-match		x -.@-: y	@: in place of @	Use this form for not-match. Supported as a primitive by (-.@-:)"n

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